Just tidying up the Markeaton Park trip with a couple more pictures.This beautiful building is just at the side of the Ashbourne Road Railway bridge and perhaps our architectural correspondent could add a few words.
To my untrained eye it looks Georgian rather than Victorian which is when the railway bridge was built. If so, and unless the railway company bought it, I would guess the occupants were not best pleased.
With the railway bridge being so massive, the house seems to have the feel of a very expensive doll's house which one might find in the nursery of a stately home.
Picture 2 is the plate on one of the overhead joists/stanchions ? I don't know what they are called sorry. But talk about putting your mark on something - this is about a yard across and 10" high and as heavily cast as it looks. None of yer poncy little plaques in 1878 !Andrew Handyside could have built me a bridge anytime. I wonder if he was the original 'Handy Andy' ?
It is a truism that some people are good at some things. I was very good at chucking people out of pubs. Ray (OurStanley) however is remarkably good at tracking things down which elude others. Pete (Manxislander) has a favourite verse of poetry from over a door in a pub he frequents and, knowing my interest in poetry asked me to try to trace it. I couldn't but asked Bungus who suggested it had the feel of a song lyric. Eventually I thought a ha! I know who is good with song lyrics and indeed has won prizes - Ray. I e-mailed it to him first thing and just after 9am back he came with the answer ! It was The Goodnight Song by Blue Murder and he had traced the entire song and even from which album !!
I dropped Y at the tram as the start of her journey to Burton Joyce and then spent a leisurely day messing-about with some pictures for my camera club this evening. It is another informal get-together and we are taking prints and things for us all to discuss. Lovely evening for photographers, the pits for anyone else. BTW this keyboard is becoming increasingly fragile. Being a self-taught thumper on manual typewriters I tend to hammer on a little. And this machine regularly misses letters out. For instance if you see 'ave' instead of 'have' it isn't that I'm dropping my aitches - it is the achine. Case in point - I typed 'machine' honest.
Apart from Radio 4 I listen to OneWord quite often and some weeks ago I started to listen to Kenneth Branagh reading Chekhov. This will be good I thought. Not so. Dull and tiresome. Y says she has always considered him 'over-rated'. On the other hand, each Sunday on BBC 7 there is a Garrison Keilor hour. Last Sunday he read 'Easter in Lake Wobegone' and it was brilliant. Not many writers have the gift to make me chuckle aloud while I'm reading/listening. He has, and Auberon Waugh had - such a pity he died so early.
Going to have my tea now even though it's only 4.30pm. I can't have yet another cheese & lettuce sandwich. Maybe something on toast.
Not Marmite though. I prefer Vegemite, and I've never been to Australia.
I am now content knowing where the verse comes from. Many thanks
ReplyDeleteYes, it is a lovely house and I think it does predate the bridge because I don’t think it would be a particularly appealing site for such a fine building, even though the railway was perhaps considered a prestigious sort of neighbour in those days?
ReplyDeleteBut the proportions are Georgian, it looks Georgian, so it probably is a duck (not embellished fancily enough for Regency or Victorian, I’d say). Until I enlarged it I thought it had been rendered and painted dark terracotta, but I now know that it is beautiful ‘red brick’ (a term which regrettably has acquired derogatory connotations).
Stanchions are vertical (pillars) and joists are horizontal (like smaller beams). It could be a girder? From the photo I get no impression of how far away or high up the plaque is; can it be easily read with the naked eye?
I don’t think I have ever been VERY good at anything. But as the comedian Charlie Williams said of his days as a centre half wi’ Barnsley, “I weren’t that good missen. Burrah’ were good enough to stop them as thowt they was.”
I think of myself as a sub-Leonardo; a sort of 3 months premature Renaissance man. A bit good at quite a lot of things so long as they are impractical.
I must have several times become close to being good at BEING chucked out of pubs and I used to be able to sit in the Lotus Position. I also have one thumb which is double-jointed and one toe that bends the wrong way. That’s about it really. Will they be able to get all that on a headstone?
I don’t know ‘The Goodnight Song‘ but I quite like the words and I am incredibly pleased to find that I am QUITE GOOD at telling a lyric from a poem.
Is it possible to get a new eyboard for a aptop?.
Philip Roth, Joseph Heller, Voltaire, Jerome K Jerome, Peter de Vries and Tom Sharpe can sll make me laugh out loud. DH Lawrence never does.
I hate to disagree as you know. But I tried vegemite once and it didn’t get near the real thing.
A poor imitation. It’s Australian of course, so no wonder it compares to Marmite as an ice cold pp lager compares to a good hoppy bitter at 54 degrees.
Alex has just phoned to tell Sandra that we have got to have their pet chinchilla.
Do you know any good recipes?